


Feel it Start

by Anefi



Series: Young Blood [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alpha Derek Hale, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Erica Reyes - Freeform, Gen or Pre-Slash, Isaac Lahey - Freeform, M/M, Vernon Boyd - Freeform, Werewolf Culture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-28
Updated: 2018-11-28
Packaged: 2019-09-01 17:54:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16770025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anefi/pseuds/Anefi
Summary: “Long ago and far away, there was a village. The village was on the edge of a forest, and the forest was home to wolves.”“Werewolves?”Derek sighed. “Wolves, Stiles.”





	Feel it Start

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Novkat21](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Novkat21/gifts).



> Slightly late birthday present for Kat! Hope you like it, thanks for the prompt!! <3
> 
> This is second in a series, but it can be read alone; generally, it's an alternate season 2, with Stiles in the Hale pack. Titles are from Young Blood by the Naked and Famous.

Stiles’s feet landed heavily on the decaying stairs of the depot as the door clanged shut behind him. The sound echoed through the cavernous underground space, crept around the rusting abandoned train cars and cold concrete. “Put the chains over here,” Derek said, elbow deep in a chest of cuffs and restraints.

“Thank you, Stiles,” Stiles said pointedly. The bag he carried jangled against his hip with every step. “Why of course, o wise and merciful alpha,” he answered himself. Derek rolled his eyes. “I hope my absurd demands were in no way inconvenient to you,” Stiles said in a growling parody, then continued in his own voice, “Well, now that you mention it, my lacrosse coach thinks I’m running a BDSM club in the locker room after school, the guy at the hardware store wants to join it, and I pulled every muscle in my arms hauling this over here.”

“And yet, you never complain.”

Stiles dropped the duffel with a heavy clatter and a huff. The cloud of dust kicked up made him sneeze. “Oh, that’s disgusting. I don’t know if this is bat poop or pigeon poop, but either way, it is going to give me so many diseases.”

“Feel free to leave, then.”

“Fuck off,” he said tersely.

Derek stopped and looked up. Stiles’s hands were stuffed casually in his hoodie, but his shoulders were tight. Derek felt his own mouth twist the wrong way, and quickly abandoned the attempt at a reassuring smile. “Hey,” he said. “It’ll be fine.”

“You clearly don’t remember Scott’s first full moon as well as I do.”

“His alpha was insane,” Derek said. Stiles didn’t relax. “You could still go to Lydia’s party. We’re safe here. The chains will hold.” He had to hope so, anyway. On both counts. Otherwise, despite the Argents and their army of fanatics, the decrepit train car they’d chosen was about to be the most dangerous place in Beacon Hills.

“No,” Stiles said. “The woods are crawling with hunters. We have to make sure nobody gets in or out.”

Derek accepted it with a nod. Stiles knew the risks. And, honestly, he was glad for the help. Speaking of. He glanced toward the door. “Where are the others? Didn’t they ride with you?”

Stiles smirked. “I dropped them off two blocks away for another errand of critical importance. You’re welcome for that too, by the way, and—you’re paying me back.”

When the new betas thundered down the stairs a few minutes later, their arms were stacked high with pizza boxes. Derek had to admit that was a good idea too.

~🌕~

A few hours later, it didn’t seem like the pizza was helping.

“This seems bad,” Stiles said. He flinched as Isaac, Boyd, and Erica threw themselves forward, straining against the bloody manacles and Erica’s awful jagged crown to reach for him, snarling, clothes torn and stained where they’d ripped at each other. “I thought you said that the pack bonds would stabilize them?”

“They’ll calm down if we calm down,” Derek said through gritted teeth. The moon was tearing at his control, too. He wanted to shed his soft skin, wanted to run, to chase the wind and howl at the stars and feel his pack— _his pack_ —wild around him. Stiles’s heart beside him was rabbit-fast, hammering. The chains were holding, but the poles they were wrapped around were groaning in protest, and the screws were rusted. “ _Calm down._ ”

“I am calm!” Stiles snapped. “I’m calm, you’re calm.” He turned to glare at the new wolves. “We’re all totally chill here, and not murdering anybody, especially me.” Astonishingly, it seemed to help. The restraints rang almost musically as the wolves drew back, fangs still bared. Stiles’s hands were white-knuckled on the pole beside him, but steady, not shaking. Three pairs of yellow eyes were fixed on him. He didn’t look away.

Derek squeezed his shoulder and took a deep breath. “That’s right,” he said. “We hear the moon, feel it, but we can choose to resist. We’re not animals.” When he stood up, their eyes jerked to him. He met each of them in turn. “Isaac Lahey. Erica Reyes. Vernon Boyd. You are safe with your packmates. The moon calls us. I call you back.” They were still beyond speech, but it seemed like they were listening. At least there was a spark of acknowledgement at their names. They tracked him as he moved along the car, instead of snapping at each other, waiting for him to take one wrong step. Like tigers in a zoo, patient only because they knew the bars couldn’t hold them forever.

“Creepy,” Stiles said. “Is there really something to that legend—say a werewolf’s name three times and it turns back?”

“No,” Derek said, “but names have power.” Even against the human side, he’d learned, after returning to Beacon Hills as a Hale—one of _those_ Hales—after years of faceless anonymity. Especially against the human side.

“Well, you got their attention,” Stiles said. “Now what? Story time? Kumbaya?”

“I’m not going to sing.” But. He should keep them distracted, while he could. “There is a story all wolves should know,” he said reluctantly. “The story of the first alpha.”

The new wolves were watching Derek like they would’ve watched a hanging steak, but he felt Stiles’s interest behind him. “You fucker,” Stiles breathed. “I asked if there were werewolf bedtime stories, and you said—”

Derek refused to smile. “Long ago and far away,” he started.

“It is a period of civil war. Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base—”

“No interruptions.” Isaac was tensed, ready to lunge forward or run away.

Stiles mimed zipping his lips. As if that meant anything.

Derek started again. He held a hand palm-out toward Isaac, fingers human, unarmed, but not close enough to touch. The memories were rusty, disused, but he tried to fit the words to the cadence and shape them right, say them right. “Long ago and far away, there was a village. The village was on the edge of a forest, and the forest was home to wolves.”

“Werewolves?”

Derek sighed. “Wolves, Stiles.” He would never be able to tell it as well as—as anyone else. Chains went taut as Erica snarled again, snapped her teeth at him, and the whole car jerked. “A human girl had been engaged to a man she hated,” Derek said hastily, dropping his hand but holding her eyes as Stiles recovered from a stumbled step back. “The night before their wedding, she ran into the woods and threw herself on the mercy of the wolves. She didn’t want to die, but she said she’d rather be eaten by the pack than return to the village.”

“And the wolves understood her,” Stiles said skeptically, stupidly drawing the betas’ attention again. Derek ignored him.

“The wolves saw into her heart, and saw that she was fierce like them, cunning and loyal. So they welcomed her into the pack, and she ran with them.” Erica growled low in her throat, but settled against Boyd, who broke from staring down Derek long enough to blink at her. “They howled to the mother moon, and the girl’s voice rose with them, and the moon saw her, and heard them. The moon gave the girl a wolf shape, so she could run forever with her pack, and never set foot in the village again.”

“Let me guess,” came another interjection, “The human dude fucks everything up.” Derek had the bleak thought that Stiles literally could not shut up to save his life. He stepped closer to his wolves, putting Stiles behind him.

“The man saw her run to the wolves, but he can’t follow. He knows he’s not welcome in the forest. So he went back to the village, and tells the other humans that something terrible happened, that the girl he loved was eaten by wolves.”

“What a dick!”

The betas’ eyes flickered back and forth between Stiles and Derek. At least they weren’t growling. “The humans decide to attack the wolves,” he continued. “They want revenge for their daughter, and they’re afraid of more people being eaten.” Cora had hated that part the most, the—the betrayal by people who, if they loved the wolf-girl as they said, should have known better. Isaac made a wolf noise like a whine, high in his throat.

“Wait, wait, hold on. Is this the werewolf version of little red riding hood?”

Derek shook his head. “The humans corner the wolves, but the wolf-girl is desperate to defend them. She begs the moon to change her back, so that she can tell the villagers the truth, even if it means giving up her wolf skin forever, and never being happy again.”

“It doesn’t, though, right? She talks down the humans and stays with the wolves.”

Derek finally turned to look at him. He could tell Stiles wasn’t quite as glib as he was pretending, vibrating on the edge of a tattered seat. He’d never admit it, but the heckling may have helped him, made it easier to get through the story without getting lost in his memories. “That’s one version,” he said. “Some say she was stuck as a human for the rest of her life. The survival of the pack mattered more. In that version, her daughter became the first true werewolf. She could choose what form to take, but only to the half-shift, because—maybe it was punishment for not being really a wolf or a human, maybe an accident of magic, or maybe the moon didn’t trust her not to make the same mistakes again.”

Stiles sat up in indignation. “A punishment for not fitting in? That’s so bullshit!”

“The shape you take reflects the person that you are,” Derek said. “The way Peter told it, the humans didn’t listen, and she had to kill them all. Her eyes turned red with their blood, and she became a wolf again, because that’s a wolf’s justice.”

“Wow. That’s—very Peter.” Derek accepted it with half a shrug. Stiles didn’t have half a lifetime of memories of Peter as the one who always told stories best—and besides, he wasn’t wrong. “Wait, you said she was the first alpha, but Peter’s ending is the only version where her eyes are red. Yours was just about her being the first werewolf.”

Derek let his eyes glow teasingly and flashed his teeth. “That’s not the whole story, Stiles. It’s just the beginning.”

A voice came from the other end of the train car, words mangled by unaccustomed fangs. They both turned in surprise. “Can you tell it again?” Isaac said, “I missed the first part.”

**Author's Note:**

> When Lydia showed up—when the ghost of his dead uncle showed up, wearing the body of a teenaged girl—the ring of mountain ash around the building reverberated like a struck bell when she bounced off it.
> 
> ~
> 
> I am on [tumblr](https://anefan.tumblr.com)! Come say hi :)


End file.
